


gentle friends and steady hearts

by Snowsheba



Category: Aveyond
Genre: Aveyond Winter Exchange 2017, Cats, F/M, three cats to be precise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 14:46:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14311008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/pseuds/Snowsheba
Summary: we are empty inside and hollow. hoping something small and sweet will make its nest in us. (unfurnished, but with care it could be a home.) – a softer world,1193





	gentle friends and steady hearts

**Author's Note:**

> happy winter exchange @iluvtoonlink! your prompt was “Rhen/Lars and something involving the party's house with the pets.” hope you don’t mind the liberties i took with the idea!

“More cats, Rhen?” Lars asks, watching her coax a stray kitten from an alley in Sedona with a bit of meat.

She doesn’t answer, only scoops the kitten into her hands and giving him a fleeting smile. Lars shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything else, and he doesn’t stop her as they start walking back towards the manor.

* * *

The manor is quiet, echoing only with the softest padding of feet.

Rhen is used to animals, at the end of the day. Back home, she tended to them, in fact – cows, chickens, goats, and Danny and her friends herded sheep with help from dogs, and there were cats to take care of mice and rats who wanted grain. She likes animals. You just have to treat them with the respect they deserve, and once you do, they’re gentle friends. The way her life is now, she can use friends like that: kind, loving, loyal. She’s suffered enough betrayals and death to be sick of it.

“Stop petting it and feed it, Darzon,” Lars says in the silence, flicking her shoulder, and at his words she’s snapped back to reality, standing in the doorway with a kitten in her palms and Lars stomping snow off of his boots behind her. When she fixes him with a look, he narrows his eyes at her. “Put the damn kitten down. The other cats will take care of her.”

He’s right; the two other cats in the house are gathered near her feet, looking up at her with quiet curiosity. It’s a brother and sister pair, Elle and Evan, and Evan buts his head against her leg and meows. The kitten in her palms mews in response.

“Don’t we need to feed it milk or something?” she says at last, even as she crouches and gently releases the kitten onto the floor. Ena, she’s decided, as Elle and Evan surround her and both start licking her, and when Rhen looks up, Lars is studying her with an expression she can’t quite parse.

“You think I know anything about taking care of cats?” Lars says. “Let it go, Rhen. There are some things that will take care of themselves. This is one of them.”

Rhen glances back down at Ena. The kitten is purring. So are Elle and Evan.

“Yeah, okay,” she says, finally, and when Lars offers her a hand up, she takes it.

* * *

Later, when she’s drifting to the bedroom to sleep, she sees Lars kneeling down next to Elle and Evan and hears Ena’s tiny squeaks. He’s muttering under his breath, and when she quietly comes closer, peers around the corner, she sees he’s watching the kitten eat. He’s ground the meat so fine it’s more of a paste, and Ena, at least, seems satisfied. Elle and Evan are, too.

She smiles as she slips under the covers and closes her eyes. Animals are loyal, true, but Lars –

(She doesn’t know how to finish the thought, knows only that she feels warm and her heart beats steady in her chest.)

* * *

They’re on the road again soon enough. There are demons to be found on the Southern Isles, and it’s just the two of them and a skeleton crew on their skiff as they go.

Being the chosen one, unfortunately, means she doesn’t often catch a break, and these times on the sea and at the manor in Sedona are the closest things she gets to vacation days. She spends most of them sleeping. Lars keeps her company, reading and muttering over spellbooks whenever she rolls over in her cot, and when he feels her stare he’ll glance back to flash her a smile. It’s a small thing, but it’s a wordless reassurance that she’s not in this alone, and that’s enough to keep the nightmares at bay.

That, and the fact that two days into the journey, they find that Ena had snuck her way into her bag.

“Guess she didn’t want to be separated from you,” Lars says, holding the kitten in his hand, and when Rhen holds up her own, he passes Ena to her. His fingers brush across her knuckles, and Ena squeaks at her before glancing over at Lars and squeaking again, paws outstretched.

“From us, you mean,” Rhen says, handing the kitten back. Lars scoffs, but he’s smiling with his eyes as he balances the kitten on his shoulders, and then she settles back in under the blankets and he goes back to the desk and Ena mewls, fur soft and black in the candlelight.

* * *

“Black cats are bad luck, you know,” Pirate John says when they free him from the jail cell. Ena’s grown bigger by now, not so much a kitten anymore, and he laughs when she meows at him, indignant. “Looks like you got a smart aleck here.”

“Just show us that you can ride the dragon, John,” Lars says. Not impatient, Rhen thinks, but defensive, and she wonders how she learned to tell the difference.

“Pushy, pushy. Lead the way.”

Ena jumps onto Lars’s shoulder and curls around his neck with practiced ease. Rhen’s hand brushes against his when she goes to pet her, and both pretend not to notice when she strokes over Lars’s fingers once, twice, before pulling back to her side.

* * *

Ena does not do well in the desert, but she stays close to Rhen and Lars anyway, even when they’re fending off hyenas and scorpions, even as they walk through a hot desert town, even when they’re sucked into a genie lamp. She only follows, mewing, rubbing against Rhen’s legs, Lars’s legs, and soon they fall into a pattern. One of them holds onto Ena as they’re walking; during fights, both keep an eye on her as best as they can.

“It’s like caring for a baby,” Lars grumbles.

“A toddler,” Rhen corrects, reaching out to scratch behind Ena’s ears. She meows from Lars’s arms. “Babies can’t get around as easily as she can.”

“Who cares,” Lars says, “It’s still painful,” but she sees the soft smile on his face when he looks down at Ena’s black fur, and she smiles, too, and says nothing.

* * *

She goes to pet Ena’s fur and then Lars’s hand is on top of hers and they both pause, staring at their hands, staring at each other, and neither of them move for a long, long time.

Her fingers press into Ena’s fur, and Lars’s fingers slip into the spaces between them, and Ena purrs as their hands sit there and she’s lucky, Rhen thinks, she’s lucky that her friends are kind and loving and loyal, too.

* * *

The ride back to the Eastern Isle is fast and loud, and Lars has his arms wrapped around her middle. Between them is Ena, terrified and hissing, and John only laughs and says they still have another half an hour to go.

(This is what Rhen will remember: Lars warm against her, and sometimes he murmurs things into her ear, and Ena thrashes between them. “A literal child,” Lars murmurs, “We are caring for a literal child,” and she laughs and he laughs and she’s warm like this. This, whatever this is, is good.)

* * *

John disappears into Sedona when she and Lars go back to the manor, Ena cradled in her arms. She’s meowing, loudly, the whole time, and Lars laughs and Rhen laughs and when they get inside the manor, they watch as Ena springs from Rhen’s arms and dashes off, almost running into a wall when her claws don’t get traction on the stone floor.

“Well,” Lars begins, and then falls silent when Rhen reaches out and takes his hand, looking back at her with first surprise and then uncertainty. She’s not sure either. There’s no cat between them this time, just him and her and the air that separates them, and she watches him watch her as he says, a little hoarse, “Well.”

“Yeah,” she says, and Ena meows, somewhere, when he leans in and she does, too.

* * *

(His lips are chapped, and he smells of grit and sweat and of the magic flickering in his blood, and she kisses him and thinks of nothing at all.)

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [tumblr](http://snowsheba.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
